Denver: whatever could go wrong for Obama?

Excellent article with nods to us. Author wonders on B0’s benefit what could go wrong in Denver and finds a long list of answers. had to quote this – too delicious

For starters, The One’s acceptance rally with 75,000 bouncing, screaming, and fainting fans could easily look like a cross between a Grateful Dead concert and another era’s Teutonic rally. They have the chant (O-bam-a), they have the salute and they have the haircut. If the cult of The Chosen One has gotten out of hand, the Speech — or is it a “happening”? — could be downright creepy. Worse still, it might become fodder for a slew of ads

As for the substance, the Speech can’t be yet another helping of the same frothy, over-the-top rhetorical junk food he has been serving up for eighteen months. The pundits could yawn, the McCain team could chuckle and the voters could well say “It’s that all he’s got?

But the really good points come later:

To begin with, there is the procedural tussle over whether to put Hillary’s name in nomination and allow a roll call. Why shouldn’t her delegates get the cathartic experience she says they need? Because it would look like a house divided, which it is. The truest of the true believers won’t like it a bit when she most likely will be denied the full honors (a tabulated roll call) which previous, less successful candidates enjoyed. She won’t be getting her full moment in the sun. And many of her most devoted followers won’t like it.

But beyond that, are the Clinton speeches. Will they steal the show? Ted Kennedy did it in 1980 by reminding his faithful followers that their dreams, and his, weren’t dying. Will the Clintons undermine The One through winks and nods? Like Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Caesar, a couple of Clinton speeches ostensibly designed to praise Obama may be fraught with zingers. Each time she mentions her 18 million voters (Read: “I got more votes than him”)

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